De Blasio admits he lacks ability to ban carriages in NYC

By Christina Hansen on November 13, 2015 Controversy

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Christina Hansen

Christina Hansen is a New York City carriage driver and a spokesperson for the carriage industry. She is a proud member of Teamsters Local 553.

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- February 5, 2018 1 Arthur and the Umbrella
- March 21, 2017 0 Public Voices for the New York City Carriage Horses
- March 14, 2017 17 What You Should Know About The NYC Carriage Horses
- March 14, 2017 1 The New York Times goes live from the hack stand
- February 28, 2017 14 Carriage horse trips, is uninjured – NYCLASS trips over truth in rush to judgment
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Save NYC Carriage Horses From Radical Animal Rights Activists
3 days ago
We need to keep calling NYCLASS out on their horse s***! Another great letter to the editor draws attention to the recent fabricated story NYCLASS executive director, Edita Birnkrant sent in to the NY Daily News as propaganda for their bill intro 1425. Your letters can be sent in to voicers@nydailynews.com including your full name, address, and phone number for verification purposes (with just your name and city being published if selected.)

Link To 8/14/19 LTE’s: www.nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-letter-august-14-20190814-txtnut36ubbbthrejh7x4swraq-story.html

Link To The 8/9/19 LTE Being Responded To: www.nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-letter-august-9-20190809-dvtza7mzybfg7i7dr5qmd757fe-story.html ... See MoreSee Less
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Save NYC Carriage Horses From Radical Animal Rights Activists
1 week ago
There is nothing wrong with infrequent minor accidents happening in a horse carriage industry. Accidents are a natural, unavoidable, inevitable piece of every aspect of life on this chaotic planet. Frequent, major accidents suggest a problem that calls for a change in operation, but minor accidents simply don't deserve the attention some give them, causing them to distract from more important matters. What works successfully so much of the time doesn’t need to be altered. Carriage drivers shouldn’t be dehumanized and demonized over slight bumps in operation and should be forgiven and allowed to work without the kind of harsh scrutiny they undergo daily. They don't deserve that type of stress on top of all they do for their horse. What kind of message is being sent out that a mistake to be learned from can never be made? The NYC horse carriage industry is already highly regulated and operates with knowledgeable horsemen and well cared for horses. There is no need to frequently blow minor incidents up out of proportion when the horses are safe, healthy, and content with their current working conditions. One minor accident does not represent the majority of the daily life and routine of every other horse in the business. We need to accept that all an industry can do is their best to avoid the majority of possible accidents that can occur and respect that sometimes they're still going to happen. It's where they're happening minimally that animals are in the safest hands. Feral horses trip and get injured without ever interacting with humans beings. It's those lucky horses that have their accidents while in the care of human beings that have the best chance of being mended.

In the NYC horse carriage industry major accidents are extremely rare. Occasionally minor accidents occur but they are not newsworthy incidents. They’re incidents comparable to a person walking down the street, stumbling on some uneven turf or tripping on their shoelace, and then continuing about their walk, not having their trip cross the mind of anyone again. Yet when something happens to a carriage horse in a similar fashion in NYC, we often see it making headlines. We see photographs of it because it can take a minute or two to get a horse back on their hooves safely when they are harnessed to a carriage. There have actually only been around five or less newsworthy accidents in the NYC carriage horse industry in the past thirty years over many millions of trips the horses have taken. Over the last thirty years there have been two equine fatalities due to traffic related accidents with just one of those incidents relevant to the speed of traffic over approximately three million trips, and zero human fatalities recorded in history, giving the industry an incredible safety record. It’s highly more likely that you will witness a bicycle accident, accident with a pedicab, or even an accident involving a falling tree in Central Park than a carriage horse accident. So why do we see articles about carriage horse “accidents” as often as we do? This partly happens because many urban dwellers simply aren’t familiar with horses bodies, health, needs, desires, and behaviors. A non-equestrian will often misunderstand a scene in front of them just because it isn’t something they’re familiar with and without a professional on the subject to clarify what the “witness” is seeing, there isn’t any fact checking going on before publishing the story. These stories are also on the front page because while one situation happens commonly in a rural environment, it’s a rare sight in a city with far less horses, so it’s going to wind up in the news. Why don’t we hear about the constant car accidents and fender benders that happen daily? Common occurrences aren’t news. But is it fair to publish these stories in such a slanted form, calling a horse “tripping,” a horse “collapsing,” just so people will be enticed to read the article? Shouldn’t you call a spade a spade if no horse actually collapsed when publishing the story?

We need to stop letting illegitimate organizations like NYCLASS fabricate stories to match their snapshots. Let’s take a look at one recent example of this. A few days ago a carriage horse's lines (reins) got caught on the carriage in Central Park, causing the horse to quickly move backwards, trip on the curb, and fall. After the carriage horses were forced off their Central Park South hacklines and into the park the city has done nothing to address the tight turns they now make pinned between illegally parked pedicabs that can cause this type of thing to happen. Three experienced horsemen quickly followed protocol after this incident. Two worked to unbuckle the lines, while the third kept the horse on the ground for her safety. The moment the lines were unbuckled, the horse was no longer stuck, and it was safe for the horse to stand, she was permitted to, and quickly popped up. She was examined, determined to be uninjured, and taken away from the scene to a place more comfortable for her. The entire incident from the time she got the lines caught to the time she stood upright again was less than thirty seconds. A thirty second incident which caused no harm to horses or humans and no major damage would typically be forgotten moments later. Unfortunately in an age where everyone carries a camera at all times, the executive director of NYCLASS, Edita Birnkrant has promised a cash reward to any pedicab driver who turns in a video or photograph of a carriage horse in a situation gone awry, no matter how small. A quick fragment of the few seconds where the horse was being kept calm on the ground was taken out of context and the moment following it with the horse standing uninjured went ignored. Rather than using the complete video showing the horse popping up with no harm done, NYCLASS chose to screenshot a piece in an attempt to make the minor incident appear as if it matches the story they invented. NYCLASS spun the incident into propaganda to push their bill, intro 1425, which would deprive the carriage horses of working much of the busy summer season when the human heat index reaches 90 degrees, in an attempt to drive the industry out of business. (NYC carriage horses already have been ceasing operations when temperatures reach 90 degrees by law since 1989 without incident.) The image was headlined "Horse Collapses Due To Heat." Temperatures remained in the low to mid 80’s that day and never reached temperatures that would have impaired a horse’s ability to work. Edita continued to show how little she knows about good horsemanship by actually *complaining,* “the driver worked quickly to get the horse back up…without first conducting any medical check on the horse.” The following day just close to a dozen NYCLASS members showed up at the hackline in protest that the Health Dept isn't running a full investigation to follow up with their false story. They rallied NBC, ABC and 1010Wins to their hour publicity stunt, though all failed to see enough weight in the story to run it.

NYCLASS’s followers still blindly follow the false stories they’re fed, never questioning how illogical they may be. They’re people that can be easily manipulated so they’re unaware of “photographic evidence” from NYCLASS being manipulated. Those who trust in groups like NYCLASS, run by a real estate tycoon eyeing the carriage stable properties simply have no horse sense. Why isn't anyone holding NYCLASS accountable for this fabricated story? It screams defamation suit, but the multi-million dollar funded organization doesn't seem threatened. This will remain just another falsehood on NYCLASS’s social media accounts, flooded with comments by people uneducated about horses and the reality of the NYC horse carriage industry, but it’s just sad to see how so much of the general public can be this easily misguided. It's scary that these people will then push for laws to pass that negatively impact horse's welfare and some city council members just might listen to them. But until we reach the day that people are able to truly understand that not everything they find on the internet is true and they’re able to open their minds beyond ideas that don’t align with their predetermined opinions, all we can do is continue to put the facts out into the world and hope that one day some of these people will stop pitying NYC carriage horses, so prideful of their work, and start to appreciate all that their drivers and owners do for them. ... See MoreSee Less
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Save NYC Carriage Horses From Radical Animal Rights Activists
2 weeks ago
The New York Daily News featured a great letter to the editor in yesterday's paper! Your opinion can really make a difference when you voice it in print! You can continue to send relevant letters in support of the NYC carriage horse industry to voicers@nydailynews.com (including your full name, address, and phone number for verification purposes with just your name and city being published if selected.)

Letters: www.nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-letter-july-30-20190730-iktx276sarbifjhz6mtbrh7jjq-story.html ... See MoreSee Less
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Save NYC Carriage Horses From Radical Animal Rights Activists
3 weeks ago
Thank you to everyone who wrote a letter to the editor of the NY Daily News in response to the uninformed and misleading op-ed they published (www.facebook.com/SaveNYCHorses/photos/a.637151806341432/2457946590928602/?type=3&theater)! While some key points may have been edited out of the letters, so far two great letters were published on July 23rd & 24th!

Letters:
www.nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-letter-july-23-20190723-hinxat5e5zgr3er5iw2hjlxbe4-story.html
www.nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-letter-july-24-20190724-2p3x66wov5f3tdxyuyc57ohike-story.html ... See MoreSee Less
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Save NYC Carriage Horses From Radical Animal Rights Activists
4 weeks ago
**ACTION ITEM** Today an op-ed was published in the NY Daily News by an HSUS small animal vet with no equine professional qualifications, promoting intro 1425, which would negatively impact NYC carriage horses quality of life by ceasing the work that keeps them physically and mentally fit at a human 90 degree heat index when they already cease work above 89 degrees without incident. The author’s title was chosen carefully to falsely give her the appearance of having equine expertise. It draws attention to the proven false (www.facebook.com/SaveNYCHorses/posts/2340176452705617?__tn__=K-R) video of a horse in "respiratory distress" and glosses over that cities which use a heat index to suspend carriage operations use one much higher than 90. It even falsely states that the NY Health Dept's equine veterinarians are interested in using an equine specific regulation which would be determined by adding the humidity to the temperature. While they are interested in using a species specific one, they don’t have a number and that isn’t how it would be calculated.
Your comments on this page are appreciated but they will count a lot more if you send them in as a letter to the editor responding to this op-ed at voicers@nydailynews.com with your full name, address, and phone number for verification purposes. (Only your name and city will be published if selected.)

The Op-ed: www.nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-oped-the-heat-and-the-horses-20190720-ohb4hxtorzbhvirfezrssljvhe-s...

More Info On Intro 1425: www.facebook.com/SaveNYCHorses/photos/a.637151806341432/2207613935961870/?type=3&theater ... See MoreSee Less
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